TIME & TIED: AWARENESS

ARC 1.1 - Of The Device

PART 5a: BREAKDOWN 1

Two intruders! The squirrel scurried up onto a higher branch to get a better view. These two resembled the others who came by every so often, carrying their funny hollowed out tree trunks which they used to float on the water. Instead, these ones had apparently tried to use a small black thing instead, with less success, and were now getting very vocal about it. Or about something.

The squirrel twitched its nose. Time to escape someplace quieter? One of the intruders then slapped at the other and stalked away from the lake, into the woods. The one left behind called out, but didn't follow. The squirrel tilted its head before deciding it was safe to resume hunting nuts - of the more edible variety.

***

Carrie Waterson shoved her way through the light underbrush, plucking at the wet T-shirt she was wearing in renewed anger and embarrassment. All males were alike. See a pretty girl soaking wet and their minds leap into the gutter. Frank being no exception. It wasn’t even the staring, not really - it wasn’t that unusual - it was more that she only wanted to put herself on display like this if it somehow benefited her in the end!

Besides, it wasn't her fault that she was soaking wet. It was FRANK’s miscalculation with the time travel device that had dropped them into the lake. The only positive thing she could say about this current situation was that, according to the device’s readout, this WAS the correct year for him. Meaning two years in her past. Albeit in the middle of June. In a forest. Without any coins to power up the machine again.

Carrie paused in her charge through the underbrush to throttle a tree branch. Ever since she had found the damned device, things had been spiralling completely out of her control. It was incredibly frustrating.

Carrie released the tree and took a few deep breaths. She realized that her leg hurt, and looked down at it. She saw that there were a couple of scratches there, and one had been deep enough to draw a trace of blood. Maybe running off into the woods hadn't been so smart. Being under the canopy of trees as she was now, it would also be trickier for her clothes to dry off. It had been sunnier next to the lake.

Carrie made a face. Should she go back? In retrospect, she supposed that she was slightly to blame, having leaned in right next to Frank without thinking. Still, the way his gaze had fallen down from her face... going back now would be added humiliation, wouldn't it?

"What the hell did I do to deserve this?" Carrie screamed to the treetops. The only response was the chattering of a squirrel.

***

‘What exactly did I do to deserve this?' Frank wondered as he stared out across the lake. He’d started the week researching frogs. Now he was stuck three months in the past with a girl who would seemingly become the testiest person in his entire high school. It's not like he'd dropped the quarters into the lake on purpose or ogled her... proportions on purpose! She’d leaned into him! Okay, so she had been trying to look at the device but... damn, how had this whole mess happened?

Frank forced himself to acknowledge the answer to that. It was more than the thrill of time travel. He’d wanted to help Carrie out. Because he didn't get to help people out that often.

Whenever he tried academically, people thought he was showing off. And outside of academics, he had trouble socializing. Oh sure, he joined clubs, but he wasn’t the sort of guy who got invited to parties. No, he spent much of his time working alone, down in the basement. Where things were more familiar.

He had wondered if starting high school would change things up, but if the first couple weeks were anything to go by, it wouldn’t. Come to think, Carrie herself was an argument against becoming more sociable! Girls like her had no notion of gratitude.

Frank again challenged his thinking. No, that wasn't right... Carrie had expressed thanks to him for fiddling with the time machine. And for helping with her mother. It had even felt sincere, as opposed to something she’d said to urge him to keep on helping. But then why was Carrie so... so infuriating as well?? Maybe it was a female thing. One he would understand when he was sixteen too. Frank sighed. Oh well, with Carrie gone, he might as well check over the time machine for any potential water damage.

After wringing out a section of his shirt, Frank knelt over the device. He pushed back on the lever sticking out of it, and the top flipped open, allowing him to peer inside. Fortunately, the machine seemed to have a tight seal, so no water had made its way into the mechanism. He noted absently that his miniature camera was still there, but any information it might give would be of limited use to them at this point. They had no power source.

Still, maybe he could improvise some sort of coin? And force a September arrival? Sure, and create a virus to take down an alien warship while he was at it? Yeah, he should probably nix his thoughts of improv and stick with the business club - he worked better within a framework. Trouble was, he now needed to subvert the very rules he’d mapped out for this device. That was a problem.

Though really, what else was there for him to do now - chase after Carrie? Messing with the time machine would at least be productive. He still had his screwdriver and the swiss army knife he'd received for his last birthday. With those, and some whittled twigs or pine needles, surely he could do... uh, something. Frank glanced over his swiss army knife to see exactly what the attachments were, yawning as he did so.

That gave him pause. He'd been running mostly on adrenaline for the last little while, not having slept since... well, what with the time traveling it was hard to tell, but it might be verging on a day and a half now. Perhaps he should lie down for a minute to clear his mind. It was nice and tranquil here after all, and a break would probably be good for him. Frank closed up the time machine again, set his glasses by it and lay back down on the ground. He'd just close his eyes for a minute.

***

Frank jolted himself awake some time later when he heard a peculiar sound. He sat up in time to see a figure (Carrie?) throw a stone into the lake with a splash. Frank fumbled for his glasses. Slipping them on, he realized it was indeed Carrie, and that she had turned at the noise he was making.

"Finally awake?" the blonde remarked. She sneezed a couple of times as she tossed some other stones aside.

"Yeah... bless you. How long have I been asleep?"

"How the hell should I know? You were asleep when I came back, so at least three or four hours. Of course, that's by my watch, which also indicates it's almost sunset, whereas we probably have a couple hours until that actually happens. I officially hate time travel.” Carrie sneezed again.

Frank blinked. "Oh. Well... thank you for letting me sleep," he said uncertainly. It occurred to him that the machine’s readout could use a display for time of day.

"I shouted your name three or four times on my way back, and you didn't answer. Once I found you, I figured you were really tired, so I stopped short of kicking you," Carrie said.

Although she was thinking it, she didn’t tell him that it was her way of balancing their account, after his help with her mother. So all that occurred to Frank was that it had given her the opportunity to dry out. "Anyway,” Carrie continued, “hoping you have some new plan at this point?"

"Well... I was hoping there’d be some new way of triggering the device," Frank said hopefully, running a hand back through his hair. "Though, as my thinking went, I'll need to, uh, improvise something.”

"Okay, so how long are you figuring for the whole process?"

Frank verbalized his thoughts. "Hard to say. The machine isn't lit up without money in it. I may have to find a way into the silver coin receptacle. All with rudimentary tools." He glanced up to where the sun was. “Might not get it done while we still have daylight. Did you see any structures arou--"

"What?!" Carrie interjected, looking visibly upset. "So I should have kicked you three hours ago!" She advanced, only to sneeze violently twice more in quick succession.

Frank paused, noticing Carrie was somewhat unsteady on her feet. There seemed to be evidence of a cut on her leg too, in addition to the bandaid she'd placed on her knee after her first time trip. "Carrie, are you all right?"

Carrie balled her hands into fists. "NO! I am not all right! I don't know where we are, I don't understand how we got here, you're now saying you can't get us out of here, I've scraped my leg and think I’m getting a cold! Nothing is working right anymore!" She followed her rant up by stamping her foot and sneezing once more. “The only good thing to have come from this insanity so far was the encounter with my mama!”

Frank scrambled to his feet also, realizing that he wasn't exactly feeling 100 percent either. "Well... surely we can figure out something," he said reassuringly. “Don’t get unduly distressed..."

“Distressed? You think I'm distressed? I'm not distressed! If we're still here in a few days, then you'll see me distressed!!" Carrie reached out to grab his arm, stumbled, and nearly fell. “I'm.... I'm not distressed," Carrie reiterated, a shiver running through her body.

“Um, Carrie, maybe you should sit down. You're looking unsteady."

“Shut up!” Carrie snapped back so harshly that Frank took a step back. There was a moment of silence before Carrie swallowed hard. “I didn’t mean that. But here’s the thing, I’ve been feeling progressively worse over the last few hours, both physically and mentally," she admitted.

“And we're the only ones out here, Frank. I was running around in the woods out there for some time, and I never found anything. No house, no road, not even a trail." Her fists clenched and unclenched a couple of times. "You've got to activate that machine," she concluded. "It's the only sure way we can get out of here in one piece.”

"I... I'm not going to lie to you, Carrie,” Frank said, after an another extended pause. “As much as I want to help out, we're dealing with technology I don't understand. If I try to force the issue - I might break the time machine completely."

Frank grimaced. "For that matter, even if I do activate it, there's still no telling where we'll end up. The spatial aspect is still unclear. We could find ourselves at the North Pole or in the Sahara Desert or--"

“NOT helping," Carrie cut in angrily, raising an arm as if to make a physical strike. Instead, it put her off balance, and she dropped down to her knees. She remained that way for a moment, shaking in what Frank figured was either anger or pain, even as she let out another sneeze.

"I'm sorry," Frank apologized anew. He took an uncertain step forwards. “Would you like me to lie?”

Carrie continued to stare down at the ground. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I’m getting angry at you. It's not your fault," she admitted. She shifted her position, to sit. "It's the fault of whoever invented this stupid device! I mean, how did we end up out here? I hardly moved at all the first time I time traveled. Why would the time machine do this to us?!”

Frank rubbed his head as he sat next to her. “I don’t know - what did happen that first time anyway? Before you met up with me that is. I remember you said it involved a link to your mother. Maybe something was pre-programmed, and if you describe in detail, we can distinguish a pattern?”