The Eternal Observer

I woke up in a cold sweat, my nostrils burning from the frigid air. It took me a moment to remember where I was, and a wide smile spread across my face. I was homeless! It took a long time to accrue the necessary gear and materials to run away from that damned group home, but I finally had them all. Getting away was easy enough but being able to truly live independently was another animal altogether. I had no intention of living on the streets and starving. That would force me into unsavory situations, and even worse I may have wound up back in the group home.

I was in my tent, covered in camo netting, about two hundred feet behind the tree line. I was fifteen, so working would be difficult without ID, but I worked out something with the local landscaping company. I had access to shelter and money, so all that remained was to just buy food and water. My situation wasn’t perfect, but it was sustainable.

I crawled out of the sleeping bag, shivering in my nakedness. I quickly slapped on my warm work clothes and set about packing up my tent. I couldn’t very well just leave my tent around for some scumbag to steal. Plus, I had to keep moving around wooded residential areas. If I stayed for too long, I would definitely be found and brought right back to the group home. I packed everything up in my backpack, ensuring that my orb was at the very bottom of the bag. That done, I was off for a day of hard labor.

It wasn’t all that bad to be honest. My job definitely kept me in shape and my boss was sympathetic to my cause. Of course, working for him came with the stipulation of plausible deniability. As far as he was concerned, I was eighteen. The walk to work was not particularly far as my boss happened to live in this neighborhood. Rico was sitting in the driver’s seat and honked the car to hurry me along. I plopped my bag in the back seat and hopped into shotgun.

“You’re early,” I muttered.

“And you smell like crap,” he replied with a smirk.

I smelled my armpits and grimaced. I definitely needed a shower.

“Whatever.”

He put the car in drive and set out to our first job for the day. Some rich guy in a nice part of town. When we pulled up to the sidewalk in front of his house, I realized this wasn’t just some rich guy. This was the damned governor’s house. With the governor, there was of course a police detail. I hadn’t run off too long ago, so this may be a bit of an issue. I ensured I had my baseball cap on and stood with impeccable posture to appear as tall as possible. As I helped unload the equipment from the back of the truck, I felt the hum of some sort of power around me. It was a very familiar hum, and I became filled with dread. Something was about to happen. Something important.

Trembling out of anger, I began to cart the gear towards the house. But as I took a step onto the walkway, I faceplanted right into an invisible barrier. The same barrier I had run into my entire life. It was a barrier that indicated an important event was about to take place. And for whatever reason, I could never get to that event. Riots, celebrations, big speeches, town votes. I was barred from all of them. I was eternally cursed to not even be mentioned in the footnotes of history.

“What’s the matter with you!” Rico exclaimed as he walked right into me.

“S-sorry,” I said. “I forgot something in the truck.”

“So, you stop right in the middle of the walkway! Jesus. Just move.” Rico was a middle-aged Latino that hated his life. He was nice enough though, in his own way.

I moved and walked back to the truck. I needed to get my backpack. If the barrier expanded suddenly, I would disappear without my things. I opened up the back door of the truck, grabbing onto my pack. Just as I did so, I was faced with a completely different landscape. It was like a movie changing scenes. One minute I was at the truck, and the other I wasn’t. The barrier had expanded on me.

In my outstretched hand, I held my backpack. Beyond my hand was an empty field. Every single time I teleported like this, I would always be right at the edge of the new barrier. Looking around me, I couldn’t see a single familiar feature. It was just an empty field with a tree line in the far distance. In the neighborhood I was at, there weren’t any such fields like this, so the barrier went far out. There was something off in the distance that caught my attention though. It looked like a strange cloud billowing upwards. As the cloud folded in on itself, I gasped. It was a mushroom cloud.

Within moments of me seeing it, I was blown off my feet by a sheet of hot air. My ears rang from the sound. I clambered to my feet and saw the cloud of ash begin to blow in the opposite direction of me. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about the fallout from that explosion. I shook my head and began to walk in the other direction. This was the most notable event to have happened to me yet. A nuclear explosion. Well, with that one nuke going off I could definitely expect more such events happening. I would of course be the eternal observer to what happened, never being able to interact with the goings on of the world.

It has been like this for as a long as I could remember. The story I was told was that I showed up on the doorstep of a fire department in my cradle. I was covered in a blanket with a black orb right next to me. No matter how often it was thrown out, the black orb always reappeared. As I grew up, I learned to just keep it hidden. It initially caused me to be shuffled from home to home as people became unnerved by its strange presence. As I began to hide its presence, word of it traveling with me from home to home stopped. But it always stayed with me, no matter how much I hated it. It was a reminder that I could never be a true member of society with a big part to play. Every event I tried to join in, I was kept from by that damned barrier. Even over time, those who I had considered close friends would forget about me once I left them. My life was not even a footnote in history. I couldn’t be the nameless man to fire the shot heard around the world. I was barred from such events by the cosmos.

I kept traveling for the duration of the day, stopping around dusk to set up camp for the night. It was a cold night, and I definitely needed a fire. The thing was, I had no idea who was around. It would have a be a stealth fire. I dug a hole, and then another one right next to it. The second one had a bit of an incline away from the first hole. I dug a tunnel connecting the two of them. I took a couple minutes to collect the necessary twigs and branches, then set about building the fire in the first hole. It flared to life, and I sat next to it to bask in its warmth. My stomach began to grumble, and I was hit with a wave of frustration. I had no hunting or trapping skills whatsoever. That said, I did have some beef jerky and peanuts stored away for situations like this. Hopefully I was close enough to civilization for this to last.

I had a small handful of peanuts and a strip of beef jerky for my supper. I was still hungry of course, but this would have to do for now. I sat by the fire for a bit longer and thought back to the group home. Was this truly better? My mind flashed to the constant bullying from both my peers as well as the adults tasked with caring for us. Forcing us to work for their profits and beating us when we messed up. The hunger I faced now was the price I paid for my freedom.

“Still hungry?” a voice asked me.

My gaze jerked away from the fire to see a man sitting next to me, right out of where my peripheral vision had been.

I jumped away from him. “Who the hell are you!”

“A friend. You’re called Alex, correct?”

“How the hell do you know my name?”

“Oh, I know all about you. Up until recently, you were a resident of the Jamestown Group Home for Boys. You caused quite the stir when you disappeared, but they have long since forgotten about your existence. You were just about to get hit by a dirty bomb planted in the governor’s basement, but the temporal barrier prevented your interference in the events that were about to take place.”

“Temporal barrier? Is that what that invisible wall is?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know about it?”

“Because I am also subject to its dictations. All Aberrations are.”

“Aberration?” Now that he brought attention to himself, I noticed he was dressed strangely. He had on strange robes that had strange folds. The folds were highlighted in black and light blue, with the robes themselves being white.

“Yes. You are an Aberration in time. Something that does not belong in this point in time. The temporal barrier prevents you from interfering with the time stream to prevent your meddling in future events. In essence, it’s the universe’s way to prevent paradoxes.”

“What do you mean I don’t belong in this time? Like a time traveler?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve always lived in this timeline though.”

“You have, yes, but you were conceived in the distant future. Your parents were also Aberrations attempting to study the effects of the temporal barrier. They were trying to find a work around for the temporal barrier to try and alter the course of history.”

“Like super villains?”

“In a sense. Their experiment was particularly cruel on you. It was only a partial success. Normally, Aberrations cannot exist more than an hour or two in a particular time outside of their own. That time decreases the further away they get from their original time. You are different. Since you grew up being a part of two separate times, you are a bit of an exception to the rule. The best way I can explain it is the universe is confused by you. I theorize this to mean that you can stay in any time you want for an unlimited amount of time. However, you are still affected by the temporal barrier. While not the workaround your parents intended, it still has astounding implications for future time travel.”

I fell back. Not because I passed out or anything, but rather because this was just a lot to take in. I knew I was strange, but I had not idea I was something this grand. I was a time traveler!

“Are you okay?” the man asked worriedly.

“Yeah. Just processing.” I paused for a moment, then a question popped into existence in my mind. “Why did you choose now to get in touch with me?”

“For a couple reasons. Your parents were recently apprehended, which allowed the government to track you down. Secondly, I wanted to personally to get in touch with you.”

“Who’s that?”

“Because our parents are dicks.”

“Our…parents?”

“Alex, I’m your brother.”

I go from being parentless to having a whole damned family in one day. This was shaping up to be a hell of a day. That’s if he was telling the truth of course.

“What reason do I have to trust you?” I asked. “I’m obviously a weirdo, and so are you. But what’s to say all of this is the truth? Am a time traveler? Probably. Are you really my brother? Who knows.”

The man shook his head and looked at the stars above head. “You really are as thick headed as our father. I’m sure living in the twenty first century’s child protective system hasn’t done anything to mitigate that.” He looked right at me. “To be honest, I can’t prove to you anything other than to show you. Now, you can stay in this time and be an eternal observer or you can come with me and experience and adventure unlike anything you’ve even imagined.”

I contemplated this for a moment. To travel through time with this man claiming to be my brother. He could be a pervert child touching creep, but I had enough experience catching grownups off guard where I wasn’t worried about getting away if I needed to. This was the opportunity of a lifetime, and my job was literally just blown to smithereens.

Just as I was about to accept, the man held up his hand. There was a low toned beeping in the background.

“Shit,” he muttered. “They found us.”

“Who?”

“The damned government. We’ve got to go now!”

As he said that, things that looked like windows within the air itself opened up. The windows were bordered by a swirling blue and white energy. People began to swarm out of them.

The man grabbed my hand, and we took off running between the portals and off into the distance.

“Where’s your orb?” he asked as we ran through the field. I heard loud pops, and the man threw something behind us. There was an electrified buzzing as he did so.

“Orb! Where is it!” he repeated.

“In my bag back at camp.”

“Give me your hand.”

He grabbed my hand and snapped my finger back at a horrifying angle. The thing was, I didn’t feel anything. It didn’t make a snapping sound. Instead, it clicked like a switch.

As soon as he did this, the orb appeared in my opposite hand and my finger snapped back into place.

“What the hell was that?”

“Mom and Dad modified both of our bodies. All Aberrations have to be modified to withstand the effects of traveling the temporal currents, but Mom and Dad took it a step further with us. Now the orb. Hand it to me!”

I did so, and he began to twist it. As he did so, it became covered in strange glowing blue markings and runes. Once he finished, he lobbed it ahead of us, and it fragmented. The fragments became suspended in the air, and a window to another time opened. It looked similar to the ones back at camp.

“Jump through!” the man said.

I did, with the man following right behind me. As soon as I made it through, I saw figures in black cloaks quickly pursuing us. The man claiming to be my brother clapped his hands twice and the orb fragments reassembled into its familiar dull spherical shape. It fell to the ground with a dull thud.

“Who were those guys?” I asked.

“Time agents.”

“Aren’t you working with them?”

The man looked at me and rubbed the back of his neck with a guilty expression. “Not exactly. Our parents aren’t particularly great, but the government is even worse.”

“How bad?”

“Picture the classic future dystopian tyrannical sci fi government, then multiply it by itself.”

I whistled. “That’s pretty bad. Again, don’t know if you’re telling me the truth or not. But, if they have a time traveler version of the CPS, I’d rather stay with you.”

The man just laughed. “Such a smart ass. Now let’s go. I’ve only got a couple hours in this timeline, and we’ve got ground to cover.”

I began to follow but paused.  “What the hell’s your name?”

“Richard. A bit of an old school name, but then again, our parents are time travelers.”

“Huh. Let’s get going Dick.”

Richard just shook his head once again and began walking. I followed suit, gazing at the vast city we had appeared in. It was nighttime, but it was illuminated by millions of mechanical lights from the thousands of buildings and machines. Skyscrapers wasn’t a word I would use to describe them, but rather man-made mountains. They were far larger than any building back home. Flying cars flew in neat grids in the sky. The streets had graffiti and crowds…crowds that we could disappear in. There were people dressed like Richard, but also like me. That is, people were dressed in fancy robes as well as tattered work clothes. Whatever time period and place this was, I was looking forward to exploring more.

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