Last Chance

by Bradley Boals

  Connor revealed a wry grin and chuckled to Johnson. “You actually believe this junk? If Liam Liot could time travel, why didn’t he just go back and save his wife from the crash?”

  Johnson tapped Connor on the head with his index finger and said, “You’re not listening, little man. The tunnel didn’t start recording until after they crashed. Even if it did, there was no power source to run this thing until a few years ago.”

  Walter added, “Yes, the main power drivers from the spacecraft were damaged beyond repair. Earth just didn’t have the technology or structure at the time to help Liam. Besides, Liam eventually came to terms with living on Earth and the life that he could have here.”

  April reviewed the control panel. “What makes you an expert on this machine, Walter?”

  There was a large wall full of books that Walter leaned against as he replied, “Daniel Elliot trusted me with things that he didn’t even trust his own brother with. For quite some time, Daniel knew of his father’s library of technical specifications for the spacecraft and all the equipment that was within it.”

  Matthew asked, “Is that stuff in the other room from the craft, too?”

  Johnson said, “Some of it is, but a lot of it is just artifacts from the early 2000s.”

  Connor picked up one of the books and joked, “I guess everything in the alien specifications are written in English to make it easy on you, right?”

  Walter snickered at the boy’s wit but explained that one of the first pieces of alien equipment that did work was a translator box. He used the translator over several decades to decode all of the alien specifications.

  “I am the world’s only expert in alien time travel,” revealed Mr. Wainright. “This is the only weapon we have against the Supreme Leader and his followers, and I need your help to use it against him.”

  “I still don’t get it Walter,” said Matthew. “What can we do that you couldn’t do yourself in the past?”

  Walter pondered the question and presented his response in three distinct validations. “Number one, you cannot time travel within your own lifetime. That pretty well takes me and Johnson here out as far back as 1950. Number two, the goal of this trip is very specific to both of your ages.”

  Walter paused for a moment, and Matthew asked, “What’s the last reason?”

  Walter scratched his head and turned to April. “I just think that you and your family are meant to do this.”

  Connor picked up an old cell phone from one of the tables and said, “Well, that’s reassuring; he has a good feeling about not killing us in the alien time machine.”

  April asked, “What is it exactly that you want us to do for you?”

  Walter grabbed a small notebook and reviewed it before answering April’s question. He explained, “If you remember, I told you that Liam Liot had separated his alien wife’s Hathmec and presented some of the charms to people or families that he had run across during his early time on Earth. One of the families that Liam gave a charm to was the Curry family. This was back in the early 1800s.”

  Walter removed a photo from one of his folders and passed it around. “You see the young lady in the center of this photo?”

  Connor and Matthew started to grin and in a muted volume said, “She’s really cute.”

  Walter rolled his eyes and took the photo from the boys. “Yes, she is a very cute young lady, but she is also the owner of Saras’s attribute charm for the Hathmec pendant.”

  Walter saw that April and the boys were befuddled, so he clarified, “You see, this is Amanda Curry. She was sixteen years old in 1984 and had been the owner of this alien treasure since her birthday of that year.”

  Connor started counting on his fingers and asked, “You said the Currys got the charm in 1800; doesn’t that make her 184 years old?”

  Walter shook his head no and explained, “The Curry family was given the charm in 1800, and it was passed from family member to family member over those 184 years. In fact, Amanda’s grandmother had planned on giving her the charm when she was born, but Amanda’s mother kept it until she thought Amanda was mature enough to take care of it.”

  Connor strutted over and put his hand on Walter’s shoulder. “So, we just need to go back to 1984 and take the charm from this girl and bring it back to you?”

  Walter removed Connor’s hand and said, “I wish it were that easy, but it will take a bit more skill than that. A Hathmec charm cannot be taken from someone by physical force and then be used by that person. It is linked to the owner, and only the owner of the charm can relinquish that power to someone else. It must be of their own free will.”

  Matthew asked, “So, if we take the charm from her, it’s just a useless decoration?”

  Johnson replied, “That’s right; you need to find a way to get Amanda Curry to give you the charm of her own free will.”

  Walter pulled the Hathmec from his shirt and stared at it. “The charms from Saras’s Hathmec are the only objects on Earth that compare to the power of Evan Elliott’s Hathmec. We must find all of them before he does.”

  April found it difficult to take her eyes from Walter’s Hathmec and asked, “Are you saying that the Supreme Leader is looking for these missing charms as well?”

  “No, April, he has already found them. He found them over the last two centuries, with his first find coming in 1984. It was Amanda Curry.”

  Matthew utilized his logical mind and asked, “Wait a minute…won’t we change history if the Supreme Leader isn’t the one who finds the charm?”

  Walter replied, “Another good question, my boy; that’s why we are going to let him think that he found the charm with a decoy.”

  Walter reached into the drawer of one of his many workbenches and pulled out a small, square, shiny yellow charm. “This replica of the attribute charm should do the trick. I’ve worked on it for years to make sure that it is identical to the real thing, beyond having alien powers. This is what you will use to trick Evan Elliott into thinking that he was successful in retrieving the attribute charm.”

  Connor grabbed the fake charm. “This is never gonna work. The Supreme Leader is all knowing; he’ll see right through this, April.”

  Walter cringed for the first time and started to reveal his own frustrations. “Stop calling your mother by her first name!”

  Connor was stunned and backed away from the table. He watched as Walter’s face grew red. “She is your mother, or your mom, or mommy; I don’t care what you call her, but not April. No one in 1984 called their parents by their first name. If they did, they were smacked in the mouth or grounded, so you might as well get used to calling her Mom.”

  Johnson added, “Another thing—you two are brothers, plain and simple.”

  Walter continued his tirade. “The Supreme Leader is no god; he’s just a man who has too much power. This will succeed if you will work together to make it happen. You three are our only chance.”

  April concurred and asked Johnson and Walter to give her a minute alone with her boys. They agreed and left them alone to talk.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you boys everything about me. I thought you were too young to understand all of this.”

  Connor’s body shook with nervous energy, and he couldn’t look his mother in the eyes. “I still don’t think we really know everything we need to know about your past, April—or Mom, whoever you are.”

  April replied, “I am your mother and I am Matthew’s mother, and I care about you boys more than anything in this world.”

  Matthew asked, “How did you meet this guy? Did you always know he was gonna ask us to do this?”

  April shuddered as she prepared herself to answer that difficult question. “I met Mr. Wainright just before Connor was born, and he helped me through some tough times. He taught me, just as he has been teaching you, about the true history of the world and what th
e Supreme Leader has done to control it and us.”

  Matthew tried to wrap his head around all of it. “Do you really believe all the things Walter’s telling us? I mean, do you really trust him?”

  April responded without hesitation. “I trust Walter with my life and I would trust him with yours. Walter has been putting these plans together for a very long time. He knew he would need a young man to do the job, and when I had Connor, he saw his chance to recruit me. He knew it would just be a matter of time before you boys were old enough to help.”

  Connor pounded his fist on the table. “So I’m just here to do his dirty work for him?”

  “Of course not, but I knew once you and Matthew learned the truth, you would want to do everything you could to help Walter’s cause. I promise both of you that I am as passionate about this as anyone. It just happened a bit earlier than I had hoped.”

  Matthew responded, “What do you mean it’s happening earlier than you’d hoped.”

  April described the conversation that she had with Walter Wainright fourteen years earlier, while holding Connor in her arms as a newborn baby. “Walter Wainright helped me and I promised to help him. We had planned on introducing you to all of this when you turned sixteen, but plans can change at the drop of a hat.”

  Matthew placed his hand near the rorimite tunnel where the images had been earlier and said, “So Connor’s being asked to help save the world, but what about me? How do I fit into this?”

  April put her arms around Matthew. “You were the blessing that I never expected. You were added to my little family just days after Connor was born. From that point on, I decided that you would be raised as brothers and we would all work for the common goal of helping Walter and his followers.”

  Connor approached April and Matthew. “You know, this is a lot to take in all at once.”

  April responded, “I know it is, but we have to decide, as a family, whether we are going to help Walter and this cause or turn our backs on the truth. My vote is to help.”

  “Can you give Connor and me a minute alone?” April agreed and went out the adjoining door.

  Connor rubbed the top of his head with ever-increasing speed. “This is freakin’ crazy, man! Time travel and resistance movements; April’s like a spy or something, and we’ve been brought to the land of the lost down here.”

  Matthew asked, “Do you believe April loves us?”

  “Yes, I know she loves us.”

  “Do you think she would ever ask us to do something that she wasn’t sure was the right thing to do?”

  Connor paced around the room and replied, “I know what you’re trying to do, but I’m just not sure about this. I still think they’re keeping something from us.”

  Matthew said, “Well, the only way that we can ever find out for sure is to go along with this and see what happens.”

  Connor sauntered over to the rorimite tunnel and punched his hands into its empty void. “It would be cool to see what things were like a couple of hundred years ago.” He stopped punching and stared at Matthew. “You realize we’ll probably walk into this thing and just explode or something.”

  Matthew joined his brother at the tunnel and with a smirk of his own said, “If I’m going to explode, I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone but my brother.”

  Connor pushed Matthew away, laughed, and said, “Don’t get all mushy on me. I’ll still kick your butt all the way back to Sector 37.”

  Matthew scanned the room one final time and asked, “So, are we going to do this or not?”

  Connor grabbed Matthew around the neck and playfully rubbed his head. “Yeah, let’s do it.”

  As Matthew and Connor entered the adjoining room, they saw April, Walter, and Johnson standing around a large circular table. Like in the room they had just left, there were various gadgets and junk sitting all around. April, confident in her boys, asked, “Well, what do you two think?”

  Connor blurted out, “Let’s fire this time thing up and get going. I have a cute chick in 1984 waiting for me.”

  April ran to the boys and gave them both a loving embrace. “I am so proud of you two.”

  Matthew paused for a moment and gave April a surprise that she had waited for the majority of her adult life. It was a simple gesture but meant so much to her. Matthew simply told her, “We’re proud of you too, Mom.” Tears filled the eyes of the thirty-two-year-old mother of two as she realized the effect that she had had on the two young men standing before her. She wiped her eyes and heard Walter in the background.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet, boy. We still have some preparations to make before you all head off to 1984.”

  Connor asked, “What kind of prep work?”

  Johnson grabbed some old magazines from one of the tables and passed them out. “We need to make sure you know what you’re heading into. These magazines are reprints from originals that came out around 1984.”

  Walter emphasized, “Yes, please pay close attention to the words in the articles and how people are dressed. It is very important that you don’t stick out; you need to blend in with the people of the time.”

  Johnson reiterated, “The 1980s were nothing like today, so you need to prepare yourselves.”

  “When you get there, pay close attention to how everyone talks. You’ll be in the South and if you don’t sound a little like everyone else, they’ll think something is wrong with you.”

  Walter took out a set of plans, a checklist of all the things that must be completed before April and the boys left. The first action was the most important. “Come over to the desk; I have something very important to give each of you.”

  They saw three pendants lying side by side; each of them had a blue health charm inserted into it. Walter told them, “I have three copies of my own Hathmec pendant for you to take on your trip. Go ahead and put them around your neck.”

  A warm rush overwhelmed each of their bodies and any aches or pains that had been present were gone. Connor noted, “I can see better.”

  Matthew added, “My leg isn’t hurting anymore.”

  April was shocked. “Nothing hurts anymore.”

  Walter explained that they were now a part of the Hathmec legacy and no one, except Walter himself, could ever take the pendants away from them. He asked each of them to create a carrier stone in their left hands.

  Each of them accomplished this task with no problem. Connor said, “It’s like I’ve always known how to do this.”

  Walter explained that the Hathmec itself furnishes the knowledge that is needed to create the stones. “The moment you placed those on your neck, you were given the knowledge of the pendant and how to use it. Over time, you will master what can be done with it.”

  As the boys continued to practice their newfound skills creating carrier stones, Walter looked over the checklist and inquired about the second action. “In order to get things set up properly for you in 1984, we need to figure out what you will all be called.”

  Connor asked, “What do you mean? Why can’t I just be Connor?”

  Walter understood the boy’s confusion and explained, “Everyone deserves a last name, not some random number, so I want you to tell me what your last name is going to be.”

  April suggested, “We could go simple like White or Black, perhaps Smith.”

  Connor wanted to go with something flashy. “How about Encarnacion or Thunderlion?”

  April rolled her eyes and asked Matthew what he thought.

  Matthew quietly contemplated his response and suggested. “Well, Walter said that we were his best chance for stopping the Supreme Leader, so how about we use that for a last name?”

  Connor asked, “You wanna be called Matthew Supreme Leader?”

  Matthew said with a chuckle, “No, I wanna be called Matthew Chance.”

  Walter said, “I like it.” He
shook all three members of the family’s hands and said, “I would like to introduce April Chance, Connor Chance, and Matthew Chance.”

  Matthew looked to his mother and brother with a wide-eyed smile. “I’ve never had a last name before; this is pretty cool.”

  Connor borrowed a pen from the desk and wrote his name out to see what it looked like. “It’s not too bad, but I still think Thunderlion would be better.”

  April reviewed the signature and gave her seal of approval. “I think the Chance family will do just fine.”

  Matthew sidled up to Walter and looked over the checklist. “What does ‘calibrate R tunnel’ mean?”

  Walter hadn’t noticed Matthew standing beside him and was startled. “That is the most important task left to complete, my boy. I have to make sure that the tunnel is calibrated to the proper time and place to ensure that I don’t send you to the wrong place or accidentally land you in a pond or lake.”

  Matthew asked, “How long will it take to get that done?”

  Walter looked at his watch and replied, “I should have it ready in the next six to eight hours. I suggest you boys and your mother look over your magazines and get some rest before I send you on your way.”

  April saw an envelope with her name on it lying on a nearby table and picked it up. She was stopped by Walter. April saw intensity in Walter’s eyes as he grabbed her hand. “Is something wrong? I thought this was for me.”

  Walter released her hand, a smile returning to his face, and said, “No, this will be for you, but not until you get back to 1984. These are very detailed instructions and directions for you to follow while there.”

  April asked, “Wouldn’t it be better for me to go ahead and review these, just to prepare?”

  Walter replied, “No, I think it would be better for you to wait and look at these once you get there.” Walter leaned in close and whispered, “Another thing—don’t let the boys see anything in this packet.” April was surprised by the request, but told Walter that she understood.

  Connor made an astute observation as he read through one of the magazines. “Why do we have to leave so quickly for this mission? I mean, we have a time machine here, so why the rush?” Walter, surprised that Connor developed such a question, responded with both a logical answer and an explanation of the R tunnel.