The future is constantly being monitored. A group of people who exist outside of time watch over the Earth’s diverging paths and timelines and make sure that the “future” of humanity remains on its proper course. These people will watch out for any anomalies, like people who’ve fallen into the wrong time period, or those who are attempting to manipulate their time in order to change the path of the future to better suit their desires.
This group must prevent or correct anomalies, but, as people who came into existence outside of the constraints of time itself, they would cause more chaos by stepping into a timeline to fix an error. So instead these watchers recruit those who feel out of place in their own time. Those few extraordinary -yet labeled as ordinary- people who would feel more comfortable riding through the waves of time than living an average life on Earth.
But do these people really exist? How can they? Extraordinary people that no one notices. People with burgeoning potential, yet they are passed over by society because they are neither in the right place nor the right time for their potential to truly shine? Yes, of course. No matter the era, no matter the country, heroes are real. People waiting for their time to change the course of history, to save the future when they are needed. People who society hardly notices when they are there, but would severely miss if they were gone. So what do these extraordinary people look like?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Ah……..ugh…..help. I’m dying, help…”
“...”
“Help, I said…...please….somebody! No! Ah...I’m gonna die!”
“Shh.”
“Shit! Now I really am dead. Ahaha...how did this happen…?”
“You’re not at your best when you’re sleep deprived you know…”
Inside a tiny studio apartment, two young adults sat in a bunk bed that took up nearly the entire space. The boy sat on the top bunk, a sleek black laptop resting on his lap, a pair of headphones only covering one ear, wearing a wrinkled graphic tee-shirt and black jeans. On his laptop screen, bold red letters read YOU ARE DEAD and his video game asked if he wanted to continue or quit. Angelo Union. 23 years old, a shut in since high school graduation. Obsessed with online video games but not particularly good at any one of them. Not particularly good at anything, to be honest. And cares for no one but his younger sister-
Devin Union. 18 years old and truant since tenth grade. Even though she found communicating easy, and thought it was simple to be social, she was turned off by how quickly her classmates turned on her when she stopped acting like everybody else. She was aggressive and sarcastic and rarely ever apologetic about it. Her habit of getting into physical fights got her expelled from school one day and she decided to never go back. When she’d first moved in with her brother he had tried to make her continue studying online, then gave up after a year.
Angelo looked over the side of his bed angrily, glaring down at his little sister. “Oh please, it’s not because I’m ‘too tired’! You could’ve jumped in to help me!”
“Maybe it’s a sign that it’s time to take a break for a while.” Devin replied. Angelo tossed an empty iced coffee can at the trash bin on the opposite side of the small room. It missed and landed on the floor, joining the twelve other empty cans scattered in and around the trash can.
Angelo lifted his laptop up and stretched his legs, bending them and unbending them a few times, then set his laptop back down and cracked his knuckles. “Alright, I’ll try again.”
Devin was about to insist that her brother take a rest when a short, melodious chime sound distracted them both. It had come from Angelo’s laptop speakers. The sound meant he’d received an email, and so he squinted skeptically at the game over screen, not moving to switch tabs yet. “Hey, sis, what day is today?” He didn’t take his eyes off the screen.
Devin turned her head to the trash bin and quickly counted off the cans in her mind. “Hmm...twelve cans so...four?”
“Wha-no! I don’t mean how what day since we’ve been outside, I meant what day of the week is it?” Angelo said.
“Ah. Maybe it’s Tuesday? Does it really matter so much?”
Angelo looked back over the side of the bed. “Of course it does! Special discounts from Ex Games Co. come in on Thursdays...Or maybe a book sale?” Devin perked up a little bit when he said this.
Angelo clicked out of his game screen and tabbed over to his email. There was no new mail that had arrived, instead, a message invite popped up at the bottom of the screen. The username was blank, so the invite looked a little strange since it said has requested to chat with you!.
“Hm, maybe it’s a friend.” Devin suggested, casually, but Angelo tilted his head towards her suspiciously.
“Eh? Whose friend?” He asked.
There was a pause.
“....Yours.”
Angelo threw his head back and howled with laughter. Then he stopped abruptly and silence filled the room once again. “Hey.” His voice was low, and chillingly steady.
But with the next sentence his voice wavered and he covered his face, throwing himself back to lay down on his bed. “Gah~ If only someone else could have heard that. Who would believe such an innocent looking girl could make such damned cruel jokes!”
Chime~
Another invite showed up from the same user, , and both siblings returned their attention to the computer. Angelo accepted the invite and not even a second later, a message showed up. Angelo read it and, furrowing his brow, called his sister to come see. Devin groaned but climbed up to Angelo’s top bunk, crawling over in between him and the wall on the right, before reading the chat message.
It read, : Did either of you ever believe there was a bigger purpose to your life?
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The cursor in the Angelo’s reply box blinked silently, and the game over music from the tab over started up again, giving the situation an eerie soundtrack.
“Strange.” Devin whispered simply.
“What should I do?” Angelo asked.
“You can answer the question, or you can ask who they are.” Devin answered, indifferently. “Whichever seems more pressing to you.”
Angelo turned back to the screen. “It’s up to me, huh?” He muttered, reaching out and typing out a response in seconds.
UltimateXxX: Who are you?
Again, the reply came in less than a second, the ‘typing…’ message didn’t even show up on the screen.
: Consider us scouts of talent and potential.
Angelo laughed, humorlessly.
UltimateXxX: Then I’m afraid to tell you, but you’re a shit scout.
: Perhaps.
: Then? What do you think of the world you live in?
Angelo turned to his sister, but she wasn’t even looking at him. Her expression was something strange, no longer blank like she forced it to be, unless she was angry. Angelo knew, without words passing between them, that he and his little sister felt the same way.
UltimateXxX: It’s like a cheap snowglobe.
UltimateXxX: One of those ones that has glitter floating around instead of snow. The little people inside it are happy and stupid. Pleased with their conventional life and content with believing their glitter is snow.
UltimateXxX: But my sister and I are holding the snowglobe. Even if we tried, even if we managed to get in, we know the snow is fake and we know how small the globe is.
“...Angelo…”
He ignored his sister, his eyes glued on the screen and his fingers flying as he typed, like he wasn’t thinking. Because he’d thought about it so many times before.
: Then, you don’t feel like you belong there?
UltimateXxX: Not in the slightest. Not since we were kids.
: What if there were a way for you two to unleash your fullest potential?
: Make a difference?
Angelo once again looked at Devin, and as the siblings’ eyes met, another wordless agreement passed between them. Angelo thought about their lives so far. Angelo never had any plans, no goals to become something in the future. He finished high school because he had to, and ended his education as soon as he had the freedom to do so. The best he could do was setting up in a basement by selling his stuff online, and letting himself be used for market research online. He thought Devin would do better than him, but when their parents shamed her because of the students who were pushing her out of school, he knew he had to take her in. He saved up to “upgrade” to their one-room studio and tried to find the best of the worst foods that would keep her growing healthily.
The siblings didn’t have a tragic backstory. They had nothing that made them stand out and nothing that pushed them forwards in life. They’d scrambled for this mediocrity and now that they were here, they were satisfied. They wouldn’t dare try to move up in the world, they were both too clumsy, and would undoubtedly trip up and fall all the way back down to the bottom. ‘Those who aim to climb high...are those who are the leads.’ Angelo had once thought. He’d realized that he was no lead, not even in his own story. He was someone who just existed, not a heart-wrenching story of failure and not an inspiring story of success. Like so many others, he was someone who was just ignored, with nothing that made him stand out. His standing in life was so simple and pathetic that he may as well not even live, for all the difference that he made-
Devin slipped her hand into Angelo’s, suddenly pulling him away from his thoughts. He looked down at her and wondered how long he’d been spacing out, for her to take notice. She looked up and her eyes met his.
Angelo didn’t care what Devin did as long as she was happy. And Devin was happy as long as she was with Angelo.
His cursor blinked.
Angelo typed out a response.
UltimateXxX: If we ever could make a difference somewhere…
UltimateXxX: We’d leave this world behind in a second.
Chime~!
This time the tone really did signal an email coming into the siblings’ inbox. The sender name was blank, of course, and the subject simply read Your Invitation. Angelo clicked open the email and inside of it was simply a link. The URL looked strange, as there was no dot com or dot net, or even a dot uk or dot de country domain. The URL was simply a string of numbers and letters, separated by three periods. Like latitude and longitude, but with an extra line of coordinates somehow.
Angelo ran a virus scan on the URL, just for safety, but he felt at ease. Devin was leaning against Angelo’s shoulder now, her eyes closed. He could imagine she’d be tired, she’d been up reading for two nights straight while he’d been above her, playing video games for two nights straight. Once his computer confirmed the link safe, Angelo clicked on it.
A new window opened, and a full screen video appeared on the monitor. At first the video showed a lively scene, a shiny, utopian city. It was definitely futuristic, sleek cars hovered instead of driving on the ground, and digital billboards floated in the sky at the level of skyscrapers.
“Angelo.”
Angelo looked to wear his sister was pointing on the screen, the bottom corner, where a ticking clock was counting up. The date was December 31st, 49 years in the future, and the time was nearly midnight. All the bright lights from skyscrapers and billboards on the street made it look like daytime in the futurescape.
As soon as the clock hit 00:00:00, and the date changed to January 1st, the screen glitched. The clock and date flickered and then blinked out, and the video on the screen just turned to dark grey static. After the siblings watched the blank screen in silence for a few seconds, a dark green chat log appeared on the screen.
: What you see here is the future.
: In fifty years, there is no more future. There is no more time.
: It’s all gone.
A text box appeared at the bottom of the screen and Angelo typed out and deleted several responses in the next minute.
UltimateXxX: What do you mean?
UltimateXxX: How can this be the future?
UltimateXxX: How is this possible?
UltimateXxX: Bullshit.
UltimateXxX: You’re lying. Nice prank.
His fingers rested on top of the keys for a while, not knowing what to say next. Another message came up before Angelo could settle on a response.
: Would you let us use you to save the future?
Angelo inhaled sharply.
UltimateXxX: To be honest you sound pretty insane.
: Perhaps.
: But we wouldn’t have approached you if we couldn’t tell...
Angelo and Devin both leaned forwards, anticipating the next message.
: That you know there is a greater purpose for you to fulfill.
Angelo looked down at his younger sister, and she simply nodded to him. He typed out his final message.
UltimateXxX: We’d both help, if we knew how to.
Tseeew~
The laptop monitor cut to black with a soft whistle, like it was shutting down. The studio was dead silent for a moment as the siblings stared at the computer screen, then turned to blink cluelessly at each other. Then all of a sudden, the screen showed dark grey static again, with a moving silhouette in the center.
“We agree.” A distorted voice from the computer said. “That you two have always been on the outside of this world, seeing things that you can’t from the inside. We know how to make you strong enough to save the future~”
The silhouette reached for the siblings, and didn't stop at the edge of the screen. Instead, a pair of shadowy hands came right through the screen at the two. They didn’t have the time to back away, or even reach out and grab the hands, because the hands grabbed each of the siblings by the wrist and yanked them towards the computer screen.
Vision went wavy and colors became ultra-saturated as the siblings dove into the computer screen, finding themselves on the other side in a long, warped tunnel, the walls made of dark blue and grey static. The shadowy hands were still grasping their wrists although the hands weren’t attached to anything. Suddenly, the tunnel went blurry and Angelo realized it was because they had sped up, zooming down the tunnel in midair. He thought about screaming but instead reached over and took Devin’s free hand, then everything for the two of them went black.