Time and Technicalities (Timewalkers Book 1)

by RP Halliway

  Here’s hoping for the best with this poster and wishing everything works out. It would be an amazing story if that actually happened.”

  The news segment ended with a faint image of the post and the drawing showing behind the psychologist. This was even worse than before. Now anyone who watched the news knew about his post. He had to just hope this would pass.

  His heart sunk as all the mortification and exposure of being dumb for posting it in the first place came rushing back.

  “Dude, this sucks,” he told Noel, after calling him back. “I don’t want to be on the news like that.”

  “It’s not that bad really, more of a cautionary tale. But also something that most people want to do,” Noel said, echoing the key points of the broadcast.

  “Still. This is such a shitty place. I feel like a worm. Now the news has it all over—not just channel 42. I saw links to TV stations all over the country.”

  “Yeah, the news is more consolidated than people think. Local news isn’t really local,” Noel said, trying to steer the conversation away from the personal side of the broadcast. “Every station is owned by a big media conglomerate and each one gets the same script of stories to cover each day.”

  “I know. You’ve taught me that before. Still makes me angry that I am now national news.”

  “This will blow over, and besides, nobody knows it is you. Only you know that.”

  “Are you sure? Have you checked?”

  “I have done a few cursory checks each day for you. And I haven’t found your name associated with anything out of the ordinary so far. I think your identity is still pretty safe. I wouldn’t get too scared just yet.”

  “Thanks,” Silas said, trusting his good friend’s skills and information. “I would hate to have this allow hackers to attack me.”

  “I think the apology edit made a big difference,” Noel said. “You did seem sincere, and that sometimes makes people rethink their immediate reactions.”

  “True, but this whole situation makes me feel so bad—lots of anger and just embarrassed by everything associated with this stupid post,” Silas said, his feelings sliding from shame to anger.

  “And this too shall pass. This is just a blip for you, my friend,” Noel said, his positive confidence evident in his voice. “In a few years it will be all over, and probably a funny memory.”

  “I know you are right, but I don’t want to think of it taking years to get back to normal. I am living in the now, which sucks, and I don’t fully realize what will happen to get me to there,” Silas said.

  “Yeah, just gotta put on a brave face and try to be yourself until this all dies down. Probably won’t take long for this whole affair to fall off the news cycle,” Noel said. “You can tough it out for a few days.”

  “I guess,” Silas said, not sharing Noel’s confidence, “it is just so demoralizing to have something that I thought would be very simple. I expected this would probably just entail waiting for a few weeks for a reply, then forgetting I even posted it. And now it is blowing up everywhere and I feel I’m being attacked for it.”

  “I’d say you are legitimately allowed to be angry at the attacks. They don’t know you and what you are trying to do is innocent, but they come at you violently and savagely. And trying to throw this all back on you by possibly doxing you too. That’s the worst part,” Noel said. “That’s why I have been trying to keep an eye out for any hacks.”

  “It is,” Silas replied, softly, “All these attacks just dehumanizes and crushes your soul. It’s hard for words to describe how much of an effort it takes to ignore it.”

  “I think we’ve all been there in some capacity,” Noel said, “but most of our mistakes are done offline, so the internet doesn’t get to chime in. You bravely tried something new, and wound up on the wrong end of a bunch of bullies. You will get over this.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement,” Silas nodded to himself, feeling a little better about the situation and trusting Noel’s opinion. “I guess I’ll pretend it never happened, and never admit that I am the poster from the news.”

  “Good!” Noel said. “That is the first step to putting this all behind you. Have a good night.”

  Silas leaned back into the couch, almost in a daze at the surprise of seeing the post go viral, both on the internet and over nationwide news.

  Three days after watching the news segment, Silas finally started to feel a little bit of his former self creep back. Work also kept Silas distracted, and he managed to hide much of the internal struggle with the post from the rest of the crew. Silas found solace in the loud din and constant activity of the worksite.

  It was only on the third day after seeing the news broadcast that Silas worked up the courage to log back onto the social media site. Seven new personal messages waited for him.

  “Not too bad,” he thought, though zero new messages would have been better.

  The first personal messages were carryovers from the time around the posting, and a couple were from the news segment, but the last two were different.

  Silas sat back on the couch, stunned, as he read the first line.

  “I’M THE GIRL.”

  Silas’ hands shook as he clicked on the subject line and opened the message.

  ‘Hi. I can imagine you have taken a lot of abuse for posting the picture, and I wasn’t sure what the deal was with the drawing. My friends told me about to the post and I wasn’t sure how to reply.

  I do look like the girl in the drawing, except I have green-blue eyes instead of the brown in the drawing. I don’t know what we could have in common if you have never met me before.

  My friends helped me set up an anonymous email on this site—anonuser777, so you can reply there and maybe we can chat.’

  Silas’ heart pounded in his chest at the correction to the drawing. In the haste to get the drawing done, he hadn’t changed the eye color to the green from his dream and left it as brown. The poster described the correct eye color!

  He took a few deep breaths to try to calm himself and then clicked the next button for the last personal message. The message contained a simple sentence.

  The message simply read: “Now that you two have met, you can talk about the dream.”

  What was that about? How could anybody know? Maybe it was an administrator? Spying on the post. Whatever the case, it should be impossible.

  Silas wasted no time clicking back to the previous message and rereading it several times. Someone had actually answered—someone who looked like the girl! He spent the next several minutes trying to formulate a response.

  ***

  Evie typed numbers as quickly as she could. She wanted to finish the data entry before the end of the day. The analysis would take a few hours to run, and she was hoping to get it all set up before leaving for the day.

  “Racing the clock?” her friend, Red, asked, and walking up.

  “Exactly,” Evie said, continuing with her routine, not looking up.

  Evie knew Red from middle school, eighth grade to be exact. Red moved to California from Australia that year, and they became quick friends.

  Evie finished one column of data and looked at Red. Ever since the first day she met Red Evie enjoyed the small game Red played in her choice of apparel. The very first day as a new student, Red, legal name Rebecca, wore a big red shirt, with a red scarf, and red shoes, all because of a joke her parents played during the move. They’d told Red that everyone in America wore red, white or blue every day.

  Evie helped Red avoid the bullying from the seemingly innocent joke, and the pair quickly became inseparable friends.

  “Nice earrings,” Evie said after looking up for the quick second or two. The bright dangling jewelry her piece of red attire for the day.

  “Thanks.”

  “Anything I can help you with?” Evie asked, starting back to her
data entry. Evie worked in the supporting division for Red, Evie doing data analysis and Red doing research writing.

  “I have a new movie that would be good to watch tonight.”

  Evie crinkled her nose. “It better be a good one. There aren’t many good movies out nowadays.”

  Red laughed at Evie’s reaction. “Don’t worry. This should meet your standards.”

  A movie sounded perfect. “Give me twenty more minutes,” Evie said. “I have just one more page to enter, and then the proofing before letting the analysis run.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll see you in the car. Try not to be too late again.”

  Evie finished entering the data and performed a matching proof on it. It was good to go. Closing the data entry books, Evie clicked the analysis icon and started the processing. She waited for a few minutes to make sure the analysis script didn’t crash, as she collected her belongings. All seemed to be working. Evie locked the computer screen and put the data logs into her desk drawer. Then she checked the time. The data entry took way more than twenty minutes! She grabbed her bag and light jacket and rushed out to meet Red.

  “Sorry! I didn’t think it would take that long.”

  “I was about to drive off.” Red scowled for a second, but then her face broke into a slight smile. “I’ve come to expect you to be running late.”

  “Thanks.” Evie buckled into her seatbelt and adjusting the fit for the ride home. She was pretty sure that wasn’t a compliment.

  “Home, Dad!” Evie called when they walked in the door. “And I brought Red. We’re gonna watch a movie.”

  “Have fun,” her dad called from the den.

  Red shouted with extra emphasis towards Evie’s dad in the other room. “Nice to see you Mr. Besser!”

  “Hello Red,” he replied, a cordial laugh echoing from the den.

  The duo made a quick dinner, and then popped some popcorn for snacking.

  “This better be good,” Evie said, admonishing Red by mimicking the stern look from Red in the car. They both laughed as the production logos flashed on the screen.

  “That was actually pretty good,” Evie said, watching the credits roll. “Thanks for picking it. I don’t have too many complaints about plot or execution.”

  “You better thank me,” Red said, “picking a movie that you will like is soooo hard. And not ‘too many’ complaints?”

  “I can’t help it if I rate the movies as a whole, rather than the scenes,” Evie said. “One scene they can fly, and the next scene they are afraid of falling—‘doubleU’ ‘tee’‘eff’,” she spelled out. “I demand consistency in the suspension of disbelief.”

  “I’m aware,” Red said, adding her friendly laugh. “You like things that follow logically. And if there is any connection to reality, you need it to be plausible. The original mythbuster!”

  Evie smiled and nodded in agreement with Red.

  Before they could discuss the movie further, her dad called to them from the den. “Hey, Evie! Turn on the ‘Best’ news quick! You won’t believe it.”

  The shout caught Evie by surprise. Her dad didn’t usually shout and didn’t ever call for her to watch anything in particular. They shared simple texts and memes and stories during the day, but the urgency she heard seemed out of character.

  Quickly finding the channel, Evie and Red watched as a news segment appeared on the screen.

  “ . . . poster seems to have remembered the dream quite vividly, which isn’t rare, but over time dreams fade quite rapidly for most of us,” the psychologist said to the interviewer, while a split image of a social media post and an image of Evie filled the display behind him.

  “Hoooollllyyyy Shhiiiittttt!” Red said, watching the screen.

  Evie sat with her mouth agape as the resemblance in the image made it seem like she was looking in a cartoon mirror.

  “What the actual fuck?” Red shouted with a mix of shock and humor. She grabbed Evie’s laptop from the side table and nearly threw it to her. “Get on that site now!”

  Evie lifted the cover of the laptop and opened up a browser. Typing in the name of the popular social media site, she pulled up the front page.

  “Do you remember the post name?”

  “Something about a dream. Just do a search for dream.” Red crammed in next to Evie, intent on not missing a single pixel of information on the screen.

  Evie followed Red’s instruction and came up with a search page full of posts.

  “Yikes!” Red said. “The poster seems to have stepped in the shit. All those posts—rebukes, and especially the memes.” Red laughed at the situation and glanced at Evie.

  Evie didn’t reply and scrolled through the list looking for the original. She found the original post near the top of the second page.

  “He didn’t delete his account,” Evie said, noting that the post still displayed the poster’s username.

  “Interesting,” Red said. “Either he’s legit, or a full on stalker and doesn’t care.”

  Great. Knots formed in Evie’s stomach. “I don’t know which would be worse.” She clicked open the post and the duo started reading.

  After two long minutes spent reading and rereading and trying to process the post, Red broke the silence. “It does seem pretty legit,” she said, leaning back slowly.

  “It does seem that way,” Evie said, “but it’s still scary.”

  During the search for and reading of the post, Evie’s dad emerged from the den to join them. He walked behind the couch and looked over Evie’s shoulder.

  “What do you think, Dad? He’s asking if this is anybody. Should I ignore it?” Common sense told her she should ignore it, but her gut told her to reply.

  “As a father, I would kill him if he ever showed up at the door,” he said, without the slightest hint of humor.

  “I’m well aware of that.” Evie sighed impatiently to the non-answer, while Red snickered on the couch. “But what do I do?”

  “I appreciate that you still respect my input,” her dad said. “You are a twenty six year old young woman, and can make your own choices. But if you really want my opinion, I would tell you to ignore it.”

  She knew her dad was right. “Yeah, I should ignore it.”

  “Really!?” Red said. “What about your dream?”

  Evie’s face warmed. She remembered telling Red of her vivid dream the night after dreaming it, also having just recalled it at least six times in the short span since the newscaster mentioned the word ‘dream.’

  “You think this is my dream, too?” Evie asked Red, finding herself unsure of the next course of action.

  “Who knows? You said that it was more conversation than visuals, but that the words were very lucid.”

  “They were,” Evie said, reliving the dream again. Standing at the edge of a hole, looking down into it, holding onto a man’s hand, voices of “they are very ancient, why were they buried, why here, why are there three of them” and then a feeling of discovery as an object was pulled from the hole. “now we get to see them, hold them,” the voice had said and faded away as she woke up.

  “Isn’t it worth it to at least try?” Red bounced up and down on the couch, her face covered in a big smile. “What can it hurt to at least answer?”

  Evie cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at Red. “It’s the fucking internet. There are trackers, and stalkers, everywhere!”

  “Look, Evie,” Red said, pulling the laptop from Evie’s grasp. “I’ll make an anonymous account, set up through a burner email account. I’ll do it all, so that your fingerprints—lit-er-ally—won’t be on it, and then I’ll type a message out. You can okay it before I hit send.” Red was already typing furiously into the browser to get things set up as she described. “I remember the training and have a lot of practice making burner accounts.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Evie
said with a slightly sarcastic smile. The first smile—although not completely comfortable smile—since watching the newscast. But her friend being there, and helping, made Evie feel a little more secure.

  “Ok, burner email setup. Good for twenty-four hours,” Red announced, putting her phone away. “Now change IP address on the laptop with a different VPN server, and clear the cookies.” Red narrated her actions, as she hovered over a button for a second before clicking it, and then shut down the browser. “Restart the browser, clear history again, just to be safe.” She continued to narrate as the social media site took over the screen again. She scanned the screen for the right button to click—then a new registration screen flashed on the screen.

  “Username, password, email, capcha,” Red rattled off, as she typed in different boxes to perform the necessary steps. “All standard stuff.” Her phone buzzed for a second, and she clicked on the burner email account. Two taps on the phone later she announced, “All set.”

  Evie, her dad, and Red all focused their attention on the laptop as Red logged in and opened the post under the new username.

  “What to say?” Red asked herself aloud, and looked around, smiling at the helpless passengers on her internet journey. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you read it before I send it,” Red laughed, knowing that they were internally dreading her sense of humor. She stretched her arms up and interlocked her fingers before pushing her arms out in front of her, as if warming up for a piano recital.

  A very direct to the point message, the trio agreed, would be the best approach. “Short, simple, direct,” Red said, looking at the very terse message. Feigning going for the send button, she laughed as the other two tensed and caught their breaths, seeing the arrow move.

  “Dad?” Evie asked for just one more assurance.

  “Your call, Evie. I trust you. It’s not too late to ignore it.”

  Evie sat for a long minute, knots in her stomach, not sure what to do. “I have to use the bathroom,” she finally said.