My name is Amelia Watson and this is my story.
I grew up in London, England to a deadbeat father who would get drunk and talk about how we were descendants of the great and famous John H. Watson, partner of the greatest detective ever, Sherlock Holmes. Weirdly enough, I believed him. Why, you ask.
Because there was always a feeling of despair when he talked about it as if he was embarrassed that he was what he was even though he was a descendant of Watson. And also, I've always had an analytical eye for things as well as a knack for the medical field. But I enjoy physics more. Exploring the unknowns of the universe? Yes, please.
Thankfully, he was only a deadbeat drunkard and not an abusive one. As for my mother, well I never knew her. My father said she gave birth to me and abandoned us shortly after to run off with another man. But whether that's the truth or something he made up, I don't know. Anyway, my childhood was a little rough, but I definitely was better off than some other people I knew.
And I wouldn't have had it any other way because due to my childhood, I met a very good friend of mine, Lena Oxton.
I met Lena when I was in Year 7, and she transferred to my school. I should mention that I didn't have any friends at this time because they all went to different schools. It also didn't help that on the first week of school, I got into a fight because one of the popular girls made fun of me for being poor.
As soon as Lena introduced herself, she made friends. Her sunny personality and happy-go-lucky attitude made her a hit with everyone. I have to admit that even I was somewhat charmed by her, but I didn't try anything, self-esteem issues being the problem at the time. Later that day, while I was eating lunch in the courtyard by myself, like I always did, I was approached by Lena.
When I asked her if she needed anything, she said she was curious as to why I was eating alone, and why some of the other girls told her to stay away from me. I told her why, and she laughed before saying she wished she had seen it. Then we got to talking and it turned out we had many of the same interests in music and TV. After that, we became friends and stayed together all the way up to Year 13.
And in those years we experienced life together, as friends only. Although I was the first one she came out to, while I did the same to her. But even though we were both gay, we didn't see each other as romance options. Lena had a heavy preference for redheads while I was only able to see her as a friend. So, all's well that ends well in that regard.
I was also the first one she told whenever there was a rock concert that she wanted to sneak out to see. And even though I couldn't afford the tickets, she would find a way to sneak me in. I was there when she had her first heartbreak and I consoled her all night. I was also there when she rode her first motorcycle and found out she liked to go fast.
That's when I suggested to her that if she wanted to go fast, she should think about joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot. She didn't even think about it for more than a second before she made that her goal. But now, looking back on it, I wish I hadn't mentioned that. Though I know that even if I didn't tell her, she might've gone in that direction.
While she joined the Royal Air Force, I was able to secure a scholarship to the most prestigious school in England, Oxford University. And for physics, too. It also turned out that I was the only girl to get the scholarship, as well as the only girl to get into Oxford's physics program, which while not as prestigious as MIT in the US, could still hold its own.
A year or so later, Lena told me she had been selected to join Overwatch's experimental flight program and would be testing a next-generation teleporting fighter jet. She also told me that it was top secret so I shouldn't tell anyone. After reprimanding her for telling me something top-secret, I congratulated her. Then she told me she had asked the higher-ups if I could go watch, and they said I could. So, I guess the top-secret thing didn't matter in the end.
A week later and I was in a building with people I had seen on the news and posters. Jack Morrison, Angela Zeigler, Winston, and so many others who were there both to watch and help. I was a little awe-struck at seeing real heroes, but that all went away when the test went wrong.
During its first flight, the Slipstream's teleportation matrix malfunctioned and it disappeared. The people there were frantically trying to figure out what happened while I just stood there in shock. A few hours later and they determined that she was gone, and all they could do was wait for her to appear, hopefully. They apologized to me and asked me to not speak a word about what happened until they knew more. Numb at the time, I agreed before being driven back to my dorm.
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In my dorm, I was lying on the bed, numb. Repeating the scene of Lena disappearing over and over before I started bawling, and crying myself to sleep.
The next day, I awoke just as numb but then a fire was lit inside me. I decided that if they couldn't do anything to help her, then maybe I could. So the first thing I did was go back to the place where the test was conducted and pretended to be there for an update. They took me to a room where they told me to wait, but I took that opportunity to try to hack into their servers.
While I wasn't an expert that could hack anything, I wasn't shabby either. Unfortunately, they weren't either. I failed to get anything important before someone came to give me an update before I left. Trying to decide what my next step would be, I got a notification about an email.
The email said they knew who I was and what had happened to Lena and they wanted to offer their help to me in exchange for me joining them. Not caring about anything else but helping Lena, I accepted to join them only under the condition I saved Lena. They accepted and sent me the little info they had on the Slipstream.
From that point on I studied the info I was given while secretly trying to conduct tests. Then one day, I had a small breakthrough.
I had asked to use a lab that was available for students to conduct tests in and was trying out my latest breakthrough in trying to get Lena back. The machine that I had created, if everything was correct, would allow me to enter the dimension where one goes when teleporting before exiting into our world a few seconds in the past.
And according to the tests I had done, the info I had been given, and some assumptions, in the dimension, everything was different. Time and space were both different. One inch there could be one kilometer in ours or one centimeter. At least, that's what I thought.
Anyway, the machine I had created had to be small enough to keep on my body so I decided that I would make it the size of a pocket watch. Praying to every deity there was, I closed my eyes and pressed the watch. And nothing happened.
Sighing in disappointment, I pressed the watch repeatedly with no reaction, still. In my frustration, I banged the watch against the table and that's when it started up. The next second I felt my body compress into a pinhole before disappearing.
When I opened my eyes, I was in an entirely different world. I was falling through space with holes everywhere showing scenes of my past, and scenes of my future. Scenes of a life I had never lived. Scenes of an entirely different dimension. In one hole I swear I saw myself with a group of girls that looked like they were straight out of anime.
After falling into a hole, I ended up hitting the ground and tumbling a few times. Groaning while getting up, I took in my surroundings only to see that I was still in London. But there were oil lamps everywhere and everything looked a little older. That's when I realized I ended up in Victorian-era London somehow.
Panicked, I looked around before finding the watch intact, which made me sigh in relief. I then clicked it to try to go back, only to find out it was out of power. I groaned because there was only one way to get enough power during those times, and that was to do the same thing that Frankenstein did to make his monster.
A week or so later, I had managed to steal everything that would be needed to power up the watch. Then I just had to wait for a thunderstorm which thankfully didn't take long, only another week. Then I made my way to the tallest building, which was Big Ben, before setting up the lighting rod as best I could.
At first, the lightning wasn't striking, it was just thunder, but after a few hours, I finally got power. It took a few strikes before the watch had enough juice, but as soon as it did, I inputted the time I left and pressed it.
The same compression as before and I was back in the dimension, going upwards this time before entering a hole. Unfortunately, where and when I exited proved just how little I knew about what I was messing with. I ended up exiting a few months after I entered, evident by the calendar and the fact that I broke someone's project and he had a look of shock on his face. Like he had just seen a ghost.
Later that day, I found out I was presumed missing, and rightfully so. But before anyone could question me, I wanted to find Lena even if it meant going missing for a few years. Thankfully I had the forethought to check my email where I had plenty of unread emails from Lena, something that we would do when we weren't answering our phones.
Reading the emails, I found out that she had reappeared about a month ago and had ended up joining Overwatch after Winston managed to fix her problem. That's when she found out that I was missing, but she couldn't do anything to help me because she was still getting the hang of her new problem. Crying tears of joy, I sent her an email back telling her what happened to me, but I wasn't able to do any more than that because someone appeared right behind me.
They had placed a gun right to my head and told me that we had a deal. Then, they knocked me out before I later awoke in a room. A little after that, an Omnic came to talk to me and asked me to hand over the watch. I knew they might try something like this so I installed a kill switch on the watch that I could activate at any time, so I willingly gave it to them.
And that's my story so far.
~
"Aw, man. This sucks." said Amelia.