The Children Who Time Lost (8 page)

Cars took to the sky and flew away in all directions. I sat in the back of the car taking us home and gazed out the window at the many faces still huddled by the hospital windows. I waved at the people and they all waved back. I wiped a tear just before feeling the car lift off.

At home, Jenny and Suzanna slept in the living room, but they still hadn’t stopped talking and laughing by 2 a.m. Their excitement for me was touching. They were the best friends I could ever have hoped for.

Kevin’s snoring grew louder. Having his arms wrapped around my body made me feel safe. But I was also nervous and afraid. I cast my mind back to the only group of winners who supposedly hadn’t made it back home after collecting their babies. It was on February 10, 2022, just two months after the Lotto had begun. I remembered sitting in front of the TV with Kevin at his parents’ house, waiting for the mothers to return for their interviews. The U.S. winners that year were all from New York, and all the news crews camped outside the New Jersey portal.

The interview never happened, and it wasn’t until nearly midnight that we heard the tragic news. None of the mothers made it back. Scarier was what had supposedly happened to them. The show’s organizers tried to relay the news as delicately as possible, saying that the heart of one of the contestants stopped beating as a result of a pre-existing condition. The disturbance to the mechanical waves within the portal resulted in instability, sucking all the oxygen and killing everyone else.

The truth, however, revealed through leaked reports some months later, was much more terrifying.It was said that the mothers actually made it to the future and collected their children. On the return journey, however, a recent ripple that had occurred in one of the contestants’ time lines—the portal is intolerant of drastic changes in a traveler’s life up to a week before the journey— altered the course of the time travel. All of them as well as the children were then transported to a parallel dimension, except that it wasn’t to any known land but rather to empty matter. Many still believe that their bodies are stuck somewhere in the portal, possibly up to hundreds of years ahead or behind in time. A memorial was held the following year and every year after that to commemorate the children whom time had lost.

The Lotto went on hiatus for six months, and after resuming, a mandatory immunization was introduced to ensure that all winners maintained a linear time tangent, dating back a month, even if they had unknowingly changed it in the past.

I never understood how the drug worked, but from what I had read, it recalibrated the brain when necessary so that it would know only of events from the desired tangent, rather than the other possible ones. That some of a person’s memories hadn’t actually happened wasn’t important. She would make decisions as if they had, and that was all that mattered to the organizers. Accidents like the catastrophic one in 2022 never happened again, and the Lotto was certified with a 99.9 percent safety rating.

I dismissed the thoughts from my head and opened my eyes. I stared at the ceiling and listened. Jenny and Suzanna no longer spoke or laughed. Kevin continued to snore beside me. I went back to the whole recalibration thing. What would it do to my memories? I didn’t want to forget. I couldn’t. Good or bad, the memories were mine. But that was the price for becoming a mother again. I closed my eyes again and prayed for sleep.

Chapter Six

“H
ave you got your foundation?” Jenny asked.

I rummaged through my bag and pulled it out and waved it in the air. “Honestly, you two, I’ve got everything.” I glanced at Kevin, standing behind them. He smiled at me and I briefly smiled back.

Suzanna walked up to me and held my shoulders. “We just want to make sure you have everything.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “We’re so happy for you, honey. It’s like we’ve all won a baby. You’ll be such a great mother.”

“She’s right,” Jenny said, joining in the embrace. “You’ll be the best mother ever. Whichever child you end up getting will have the best mother in the world.”

Thoughts streamed through my head about how Madeline and I used to play together and the way she always smiled at me when I stroked her hair. Suzanna pulled back and stared straight into my teary eyes.

“Aww, what’s wrong, honey?”

Jenny also took a step back to study me.

I shook my head and wiped the tears from my face. “I don’t know. I just can’t stop thinking about Madeline. If she were alive, she’d be getting a brother or sister today.”

“You can’t think like that,” Jenny said. “Come here.” She gave me a tight hug and started crying, too.

Kevin dropped a gray suitcase by my feet and smiled. I embraced him, and he held on tightly to me. “I love you so much,” he whispered in my ear.

“I love you, too,” I said.

He moved me toward the cream couch and sat me down. “You have to be strong, baby. This is the start of our new life. Let’s just look to the future now.”

I nodded and wiped some more tears from my eyes while exchanging glances with everyone in the room. The telephone rang.

“I’ll get it,” Suzanna said. She picked up the phone from its bracket on the wall and listened. “Thanks. She’ll be right down.” She replaced the phone and looked at me with a beaming smile. “They’re waiting for you downstairs.”

I looked around the living room and stood up. “This is it. No turning back now.”

“Be brave, baby,” Kevin said. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

I gave him another embrace and walked toward the door. After picking up the suitcase, I kissed Suzanna and Jenny on both cheeks and walked out. When I reached the ground floor, the press were waiting for me—again, completely against protocol. There were at least ten cameras, probably streaming footage to the world. Two silver second-generation Kysos stood in the middle of the foyer, surrounded by at least twenty armed police officers.

A small crowd had gathered inside the apartment building, with maybe two hundred people outside, all peering in. A tall woman with long black hair walked toward me with a computer tablet in her hand. I dropped my suitcase and stood upright.

She extended her hand. “Rachel Harris,” she said. “It’s wonderful to meet you. I’m Angela Parish.”

I shook her hand. “Hi, Angela.”

“Will your husband be accompanying you to the departure gates?”

“No. It’ll be just me.” I never understood why only women could go and collect the children, especially when the Lotto organizers made it compulsory that only couples could enter. But I wasn’t about to start making a fuss, although I wished Kevin could come with me.

“Very well then,” she said. “We’d better leave at once.” She nodded at my suitcase. “You won’t be needing that. Your child’s belongings will already be packed when you arrive.” She nodded at a Kyso, which stepped forward and extended its hand.

“I’d be happy to take your bag back to you apartment, Mrs Harris,” it said.

I handed the suitcase over and watched it walk toward the elevator.

Angela placed her hand around my waist and turned toward the apartment’s exit. “The other contestants are already at the facility.” She raised her hand in the air and spun it in a clockwise fashion. The Kysos faced the door and the armed officers stepped aside to create a path for me.

“Please follow me,” Angela said.

I followed her in silence. My knees shook as I walked. I looked into the eyes of each police officer. Most stared into space, their eyes never blinking. I couldn’t stop my hands from quivering.

Angela looked at me. “You’ll be just fine. By the time you get to the facility, you’ll be prepped and ready for time travel.”

“Prepped?”

“Yes. In addition to the standard immunization, protecting against any time-tangent malfunction, we also have to prepare you for any possible infections you might catch upon exiting the other gate.” She waited just by the apartment door for the police officers outside. They had started to move the spectators away, opening a path to a van waiting for us twenty yards away.

I continued beside Angela. Two fifth-generation Lypsos stood beside a red van that floated three feet in the air with its trunk open. “Welcome, Mrs. Harris,” one of them said in its familiar mechanical voice. “We shall be taking you to the Valencia Time Travel Facility. Will you be taking any luggage with you?”

“No, I don’t have any luggage.”

The Lypso that hadn’t spoken stepped forward and shut the trunk. Angela smiled at me and got into the van. She gestured for me to follow, which I did. Two middle-aged men in white jackets sat inside. The thinner of the two held a shiny metal case. I knew what was inside immediately, and a chill came over me. I swallowed with a dry throat and placed my palms together. The matte-black third-generation Lypso in the driver’s seat nodded at us before facing forward and starting the engine. My mind remained on the case in the man’s hand.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Angela said. “You’ll only feel the pain for five seconds. This new form of immunization is not as painless as the previous ones, but it’s much more potent. It also combats over five hundred possible viruses that could affect you after you arrive in the future.”

I nodded. Angela nodded at one of the men and he pushed a button that closed the right door. The car rose higher in the air. My heart continued to pound. I couldn’t tell if the fear was due to my traveling so far into the future or to becoming a mother again. I leaned past Angela to look out the window. Many people waved at me, with some mothers holding their own children up in the air. The car stopped rising after we reached a hundred feet and remained stationary for a while. Then a number of police vehicles with flashing red lights pulled in front of us. The traffic enforcer moved in front of them and led the way. Our van was unsteady for the first few minutes but then started gliding smoothly.

One of the men in the backseat placed the silver case on his lap and opened a small flap. He typed a pass code into a keypad and then took his hands away. The case shot open to reveal a glass panel that looked like a palm reader. He turned it toward me. “Can you please place your right hand on the reader, Mrs. Harris?”

I studied the reader without moving an inch. What if a different tangent to my current reality was chosen? Would I really forget everything that happened for the last month, or would it just be some things? I met the man’s blank gaze and placed my hand on the reader. At first, nothing happened, but then I felt intense heat seeping into my fingers. It felt as if they would catch fire. I grimaced. After a while, the pain became unbearable, and I tried to lift my hand but couldn’t. I glanced at Angela, and she had the same ridiculous grin I’d noticed on the reporters the night before. I wanted to scream but held it in. A second later, the heat lessened and the pain subsided. I panted, but Angela and the men didn’t seem bothered. Then my head felt light, like I’d been given a heavy sedative. As much as I fought it, I couldn’t stop my eyes from closing.

I saw blue skies when I opened my eyes. Angela’s smiling face also greeted me. The two men were looking out the window with sheer disinterest. I lifted my hand and saw red marks on my palm, like it had been burned. The man who had typed the pass code into the case turned toward me. “Don’t worry, it’ll heal.”

I looked left and right and rested both hands on the back of my head, trying to recall something, anything. My memories seemed to be intact. I remembered the dinner at Gianfranco’s, the interview I had on TV the night before, and the nightmare I had about Madeline at Jarrod’s place. My biggest fear was losing even a single memory of my daughter, but they were all there, even the ones that brought me pain inside.

I kept trying to remember as much as I could. I couldn’t think of anything that could have been missing. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. “How long was I out?”

“Only five minutes,” Angela said. “But everything went just as planned. No anomalies in your tangent.”

I returned my gaze to the sky, unsure of whether to believe her or not. Sure, she said that none of my memories had been wiped, but they’d hardly tell those who had their tangents changed that it actually happened. That was the whole point of the drug.