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H
igh school graduation.

I never thought I’d make it. The possibility of actually sitting at my graduation ceremony on the football field, next to my friends, watching my parents beam proudly as I walked up to get my diploma was an impossible dream that actually came true.

I ate up every second of it, mostly because it was all so normal.

I had started the day hours before on my porch, gazing out at the ocean from my home on Pemberwick Island. It was a spectacular view I never got tired of or took for granted. Not anymore. I had worked too hard and gone through too much to get back there. I appreciated every second I spent on Pemberwick and always would.

The surf was high that day, creating a series of deep booms that echoed across the beach as each new set came in. There looked to be a storm brewing in the distance, based on the deep gray clouds that hovered on the horizon and the hundreds of seagulls on the beach that had come ashore to avoid getting caught up in it. For a moment I feared that the storm might prevent me from getting to graduation, but I immediately dismissed the thought. There was nothing that would keep me from that ceremony.

The school’s jazz ensemble played “Forever Young”; the keynote speaker was some author I’d never heard of who talked about striving for your goals and never taking “no” for an answer; and the valedictorian (for the record, not me) spoke about how we hadn’t reached the end, but were embarking on a new beginning.

Truer words had never been spoken.

It was the kind of ceremony that was being repeated all over the country. Same speeches, different faces.

What made it all the more special was that three of the most important people in the world to me were also there: Tori, Kent, and Olivia. We had attended Kent’s graduation ceremony two years before. (He wasn’t the valedictorian either, for the record.)

When I stepped on that stage to receive my diploma and shake the hand of the headmaster, it gave me a feeling of peace and satisfaction I feared I would never achieve.

I wanted normal. This was normal.

What wasn’t normal was the series of events that led us to that moment.

It was a strange chain that began on January 24, 1952, in the Mojave desert.

We were interrogated by the Army, separately of course. Being questioned had become old hat. We each gave our account of what happened and I didn’t doubt for a second that we would all give the exact same story.

Except for Feit. There was no telling what he said. I made sure to explain to my interrogators exactly what his role was in the genocide that preceded the invasion of the past.

The interrogation process lasted for days, no big surprise. We were kept apart the whole time, probably so we wouldn’t compare notes to keep our wacky stories straight. I didn’t blame our U.S. Army hosts one single bit. Our story was impossible to believe. Different interrogators cycled through, trying to poke holes in our accounts and find the fatal flaw that proved we were making the whole thing up.

They didn’t find any because none existed.

They brought in psychiatric experts to determine if we were out of our minds.

Of course, we weren’t.

After the first week, we were allowed to see each other. All of us but Feit, that is. That was the first clue that they had accepted our story, including Feit’s role in the death of millions of people. The four of us were brought to a building they called a Quonset hut, which was basically a long steel structure with a rounded roof, like an upside-down half-pipe. It was a comfortable place, complete with a few couches and stuffed chairs. It would have been nice if there had been modern air conditioning. The few table fans blowing around hot desert air didn’t count.

I arrived first, followed shortly after by Tori. When I saw her we immediately ran to each other and hugged. We stayed that way for a good few minutes. It was like holding on to a lifeline in the midst of a swirling sea.

“You okay?” I finally asked.

She nodded and pulled away.

“I’m okay too,” Kent said as he stepped in. “In case you were wondering.”

We gave each other quick but genuine hugs.

“Hey I want some of that too,” Olivia chirped as she bounced in.

It became a four-way hug-fest. I had said many times in the past (or the future, actually) that the four of us were all we had. It never felt truer than in that moment.

“Where’s Feit?” Tori asked.

“Swinging from a noose,” Kent said quickly. “I hope.”

“That won’t happen,” I said.

“Why not?” Kent asked. “He was part of the biggest mass murder in history.”

“Yeah,” I said. “History that hasn’t happened yet. There’s no evidence to prove he did any of that.”

“No,” Tori said. “That he’s
going
to do any it. You can’t prosecute somebody for a crime they’re going to commit fifty some odd years from now.”

“Or three hundred years from now,” Olivia said.

“Jeez, that makes my head hurt,” Kent said. “Does anybody know how this happened? I mean, I could explain everything to those Army dudes except for why we’re sitting here in nineteen freakin’ fifty-two.”

“I can only guess,” I said. “When the bomb went off it somehow reversed the Bridge and blew us back to when it was first opened.”

“Yeah, but how?” Kent asked.

“How?” I replied, laughing. “How did
any
of this happen? Physicists are going to be trying to figure that out for years. Don’t expect an answer from me.”

“So why didn’t they set off the bomb?” Olivia asked.

“Because we sealed that pod,” Tori said. “It closed a circuit that sent an alarm to the firing room. When they realized somebody was in there, they stopped the countdown.”

“So the bomb blast shot us back to the exact moment in 1952 before the original bomb was detonated,” I said. “And by being here, we prevented it from going off.”

“That means none of it happened!” Kent exclaimed. “The Bridge wasn’t created so the Retros won’t be able to go back to the past and vaporize all those people.”

“No,” Olivia said with authority. “It all happened.”

“But I thought we stopped the Bridge from opening up!” Kent said, frustrated.

“I told you,” Olivia said. “You can’t change the past. Once something happens it can’t un-happen. Our existence in the twenty-fourth century and yours in the twenty-first century were two different timelines that were connected by the Bridge.”

“You mean like different dimensions running parallel to each other?” Tori asked.

“I guess,” Olivia said. “I never really understood it all. I’m not sure anybody else did either. There were some geniuses who said they did but I think they were just blowing smoke.”

“So that crappy future still exists?” Kent asked. “It’s still out there . . . somewhere?”

“I think so,” Olivia replied. “The only difference is they can no longer invade the twenty-first century because we closed the Bridge.”

“That means all those people are still dead,” Tori said.

“No!” Kent exclaimed. “Without the Bridge the Retros couldn’t send those killer planes back.”

“But that’s not how it works,” Olivia said, patiently. “I’m sorry Kent, but the people of the twenty-first century you lived in have to deal with what the Retros did and rebuild from what’s left. But SYLO did exactly what they set out to do. They stopped the invasion and preserved society.”

“With a lot of help from the Sounders,” Tori pointed out.

“Yeah, and us,” Kent added. “And speaking of us, where exactly do we fit into this fantasy?”

“I think we created another timeline,” I said.

“We what?” Kent asked, incredulous.

“We were shot back to the past and stopped the bomb test from happening,” I said. “But the past can’t be changed. That means we’ve started the clock ticking on yet another timeline.”

“Seriously?” Tori asked. “We’re stuck here in . . . in . . . what? Another dimension?”

“That’s exactly it,” Olivia said. “As far as we know, there are three realities now. The twenty-fourth century when I was born. The early twenty-first century that you guys came from, and—”

“And a new timeline that began on January 24, 1952, with no Bridge to the future,” I said, finishing her point. “Where we are right now. At least that means this reality won’t be invaded by the Retros.”

Kent rubbed his face anxiously. “Okay, let’s pretend that’s all true,” he said, his voice cracking with nervous energy. “How do we get back to our own time? Our own reality?”

We all exchanged anxious looks. Nobody wanted to say the obvious so I took the step myself.

“We don’t,” I said with finality.

“That other life will go on without us,” Tori said quietly. “And we have to make a new life here.”

“But . . .” Kent was all set to jump in with a reason why that couldn’t be true, but he didn’t have one.

It was a sober moment as we let the undeniable reality sink in. We would never see our families again. We would never get back to Pemberwick Island. At least not to the Pemberwick Island we knew.

“I don’t want to live in the past,” Kent said, glum.

“Tell me about it,” Olivia shot back quickly.

“There has to be a way,” Kent added with a touch of desperation.

“Not unless they create another Bridge,” I said. “But even if they did, there are no guarantees it would open up in the exact right time of our original lives. What we’ve got here, right now . . . this is it.”

“Like it or not,” Olivia said. “This reality, this time, is our home now.”

“The people from home will think we were killed in the bomb blast,” Tori said, soberly.

“At least we’ll be remembered,” Kent said. “They’ll probably erect statues of us. We’ll be the brave heroes who gave their lives to save the world.” He sighed and added, “Nobody will know we’re still alive in another freakin’ dimension. Jeez.”

“Remember that,” I said.

“Remember what?” Kent asked.

“We’re still alive.”

With that understanding, our new lives began.

We spent the next year living at the military base sixty miles from where the dome was built. Area 51. Our existence was kept secret from all but a few top military types, scientists, and government officials. Oddly, most people who knew who we really were didn’t want any contact with us. They didn’t want to be influenced by knowing what would happen in the future. Or maybe they were just scared.

I think information leaked out that something odd was going on at Area 51 and it caused a slew of headlines. I’m not saying we were the aliens that everyone suspected were being kept hidden at the base, but we were undeniably alien to this world and we were most definitely kept hidden.

For the record, I never bumped into any other aliens at Area 51.

The government wasn’t sure what to do with us. I’m happy to say that they didn’t do any strange testing on us like you see in movies. They treated us like normal kids . . . who happened to be from the future.

On one hand they tried to learn as much as they could about the phenomenon that had ripped open a hole through time. We spoke with physicists from all over the country. They were the guys who had the least trouble believing us, because they always thought time travel was possible. Our existence justified their theories. But they were cautious about not asking us anything about specific events that had happened in our past, or their future. They saw it as an ethical dilemma. Why should a few people know about what the future held while most others didn’t have that advantage? I got that. I didn’t want to go messing with the world any more than we already had. How would things have changed if we told them that President Kennedy would be assassinated? Or that we would land on the moon? How much would that knowledge have changed the natural course of events? Probably a lot and maybe not for the better. There was no way to know for sure, so it was best left unsaid.

We did tell them as much as we could about what a mess the world would become due to the exhaustion of fossil fuels, pollution, and overpopulation. They took note, but didn’t seem too worried about it. We got a little taste of what some of the people from our time experienced when trying to warn the world about the coming disaster.